Tuesday, 23 April 2013

TV vs Set Reports: The Snowmen

So here's the first of a series of posts that I will try to do over the next couple of weeks. People moan about how spoiler-y set reports are and how there's 'barely any point watching the episode after reading them.' I have a grumpy habit, and that's disputing that point of view. Yes, set reports are spoiler-y, but they've never ruined an episode for me and I've seen quite a lot of filming, now! So I like to contrast what we saw where we found filming and how the episode turned out. You might have guessed by now that it's surprisingly little, even for the episodes we saw a lot (for instance this episode, 'The Snowmen', and 'The Crimson Horror') Plus to balance it out we didn't see any filming for either 'The Rings of Akhaten' or 'Cold War' as they were mainly filmed in the studio.

Anyway, too much waffle. Onwards!

All stills are copyright to the BBC. All set report photos were taken by my boyfriend, @gabundy.

Monmouth:

This was filmed at Treowen Manor, Monmouth. We visited the
location whilst they were filming but the grounds were closed. We're
stood outside somewhere, encountering sheep bones in the path.
Obviously we didn't see anything.

We watched them filming in this alley way. It was so packed that you
couldn't see anything. We did make out a little bit of dialogue. "Takeher back where you found her." "Not my problem. Merry Christmas."

Picture from set.

When they set up we had fake snow falling all over us. It was
very pretty. They originally filmed it so that Clara chased after the
carriage and fell over. All of this was cut in post production and
Clara hanging upside down in the carriage was added.

Picture from the set. Clara's stunt double was used
for running after the carriage.

I remember us standing outside Fields House with a few other fans
being highly unconvinced that the maid was Liz White while others
were arguing passionately that she was. Of course they were right
(my celeb spotting skills are rubbish. Not handy for this hobby.)

This was an amazing day of filming. Freezing cold, went on late into
the night but so good to watch. It was filmed in a park (recently
used for Sherlock filming, as well) with fences all around it, so fans
just stood the whole way around and openly gawped.

Picture from the set. It looked
much prettier once all the
scaffolding had been removed in
the edit.

Picture from the set.

Picture from the set.

Picture from the set.

Picture from the set.

This was filmed before the scenes where Clara is in the red dress, so
they could use the daylight. The director wasn't happy with this scene
and made them do a lot of times until the point you could see they
were becoming uneasy about dusk settling in.

I felt really sorry for (the gorgeous) Tom Ward. He only had a very
tiny moment in this scene so did an awful amount of hanging around
(I still haven't got used to seeing celebrities/very gorgeous men
hanging around close to me [oh, sorry, obviously other than my
boyfriend..!] and was far too nervous to ask for an autograph.)

Tom Ward.

We wondered if this girl was important for a long time. It was the
only time we saw her, but one of the few times we'd seen someone
be pally with Clara. She wasn't.

Jenna tried on loads of different outfits for this tiny moment. Pictures
on the original blog post.

And that's it! For an episode that it seemed like we saw an awful amount of filming for we didn't see an awful lot. We never saw Richard E Grant, I never saw the Snowmen (friends did, I was away typically.) so we knew nothing about the main threat of the episode. We did see "GI" on the carriage, but didn't realise it meant "Great Intelligence." And yet the glimpses we did get, the scenes we heard and saw acted out in front of us like an amazing science-fiction street play just fed the love I have for Doctor Who. I think very little could spoil that.